The Pentagon gravy train runs out in 2020...

via Defense News.

The U.S. government’s annual budget deficit is set to grow to $1 trillion in 2020 and record levels afterward, part of a gloomy economic outlook from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The report comes amid military spending increases to counter Russia and China, raising the question of how those increases are compatible with the 6-month-old GOP tax cuts and the huge deficits they’re expected to spawn.

The military will be “hurt,” the House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith, said Tuesday, adding that the nation’s combination of tax cuts and spending increases leave the U.S. ill-equipped to economically compete with China and other major powers.

“President Trump and the Republicans’ extremely reckless tax cuts, combined with our ongoing unwillingness to make strategic choices about how we spend our defense dollars, will end up forcing unpleasant national security trade-offs at precisely the time we are expecting increased strategic competition,” said Smith, of Washington.

“We are constantly told that we need to do everything we can to prepare for these challenges. But instead Congress has put us in a massive hole, and those deficits will hurt the military at a time when it is most problematic,” he added.

Story here. 

2020 is the drop dead date.

The F-35 took too long.  The military slow walked other programs to get it across the finish line.

Now.

Now things are about to go from bad to worse.

We have forces deployed around the globe, we're involved in a never ending war in Afghanistan, we're supporting idiots in Yemen, we're involved in the continent of Africa, Syria is still boiling, we have a fake war in Europe against a fictional enemy and we're supposedly gearing up to fight China while modernizing our forces and building leap ahead technology.

But at the same time the budget issue is coming back.

They tried to plan but the plan didn't work.  I don't think they have a plan B.